Archive for the ‘Jim Hall’ tag

Given the focus that Ford had put into beating Ferrari in endurance racing, motorsport fans probably expected the Ford GT40 to repeat its 1965 Daytona victory with a win at Sebring. Instead, it was an innovative team from Texas, running an open-cockpit, Chevy-powered sports racer of their own design, that claimed victory in the 1965 race. In honor of the 50th anniversary of this win, the Chaparral 2 will once again take to the runways of Sebring in 2015, driven in exhibition laps by Jim Hall II, the son of its creator.

Tired of buying what they perceived to be second-tier race cars from Europe, Texans Jim Hall and Hap Sharp figured they could build a better car on their own. The pair had already teamed up with other racers in the Midland, Texas, area to build Rattlesnake Raceway, and thanks to money made in the oil business, funding such a project, or funding the development of an all-new race car, wasn’t much of an issue. Needing a place to start, the pair bought a modified version of the Scarab sports racer from builders Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes. In total, four more of these “Chaparral 1″ models were built, but none achieved the same winning record as the original Scarab.

The Chaparral 1 did provide Hall with a rolling laboratory in which to test his theories of race car development, and in late 1963 Hall debuted an all-new Chaparral model, designed and built in Midland, Texas. Calling the car innovative would be an understatement; instead of a conventional tube frame, the Chaparral 2 used a steel-reinforced fiberglass monocoque. To lower the front of the car and improve weight distribution, the Chevrolet V-8 engine was moved amidships, positioned behind the driver. Suspension design was borrowed from Lotus, while class-leading suppliers of the day provided other needed mechanical bits. The assemblage of parts worked, and at the car’s first outing, the 1963 Los Angeles Times Grand Prix at Riverside, Hall put the Chaparral 2 on the pole and led the race until an electrical fire ended his day early.

The rest of the season was spent sorting the usual development problems, but Hall’s access to GM ‘s aerodynamic research would prove invaluable. When front lift became an issue, GM engineers provided assistance to Hall in reshaping the Chaparral 2′s front end, pointing and lowering the nose and adding a pair of chin spoilers at the bottom of each front fender. In 1964, the Chaparral 2 delivered its first victory, at a USRRC race in Pensacola, Florida, but Hall kept on improving the car.

At Laguna Seca he introduced an experimental automatic gearbox designed by GM, which allowed a driver to work two pedals instead of the usual three. In later Chaparral versions, the automatic gearbox would also allow a driver to change the angle of attack on the car’s wing with his left foot, adding downforce for corners or decreasing drag for more speed on straights.

Hall’s drive for innovation didn’t end with chassis development, either. At Sebring in 1965, he brought in a meteorologist to provide a detailed forecast; rain was expected, but knowing exactly when that rain would hit could pay big dividends. Armed with this information, Hall had built a seven-lap lead by the time rain began to fall in earnest. At one point during the 12-hour race, the team was forced to park the car, as visibility had fallen from “bad” to “nonexistent,” and, as son Jim Hall II relates, both Hall and co-driver Sharp were glad to even finish the race. Though both drivers spent stints sitting in pools of water in the open-cockpit racer, the end result proved worth the suffering, with the Chaparral 2 delivering a four-lap victory over its nearest rival, a Ford GT40 driven by Ken Miles and Bruce McLaren.

Jim Hall II will pilot the Chaparral II for exhibition laps during this year’s 12 Hours of Sebring, the 63rd running of the storied event. Hall II has a racing resume of his own, and operates the Jim Hall Kart Racing School in Oxnard, California, as his day job. He’s driven the Chaparral 2 before as well, sharing driving duties with Lord March and Gil de Ferran at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and showing off for fans at Laguna Seca during the Monterey Historics. Hall II will pilot the Chaparral 2 on Friday, March 20, ahead of the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge race, and again on Saturday, March 21, prior to the start of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship race.

Further details can be found on the IMSA.com website, but if Sebring isn’t in your travel plans, all seven remaining Chaparral models can be seen at The Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, where the cars are exercised on a somewhat regular basis. Visit PetroleumMuseum.org for more information.

As anybody who’s familiar with the Carroll Shelby story knows, Shelby had plenty of plans for lightweight American V-8-powered sports cars that would go head to head with the best Europe had to offer long before he swapped a Ford V-8 into an AC and took it racing. One of those plans called for Scaglietti to coachbuild a series of Corvettes, and while the plan never came to fruition, Scaglietti did body three cars before the scheme was scuttled. One of those three, this 1959 Chevrolet Corvette by Scaglietti for sale on Hemmings.com, features a fuel-injected small-block Chevrolet V-8 and four-speed transmission. From the seller’s description:

The fascinating and complex history of the Scaglietti Corvette began when Gary Laughlin, a wealthy Texas oil man and gentleman racer, had just broken the crankshaft in his Ferrari Monza. Like most Ferrari repairs, this was not going to be a cheap, simple fix.

At the time, Laughlin was an active participant of the American sports car racing scene and was a close acquaintance of many of the key figures, including fellow Texan Carroll Shelby. The two had witnessed a number of V8 powered home-built specials challenge, and often defeat, the best that Europe had to offer. The idea developed that they should build a dual-purpose car based on the solid mechanicals of the Chevrolet Corvette. European-style alloy coachwork could help the chassis finally realize its potential. By chance, Laughlin owned a few Chevrolet dealerships and had a particularly valuable friend in Peter Coltrin, an automotive journalist who had gained an “in” with the influential Italians.

Laughlin met with Jim Hall and Carroll Shelby to begin discussing what form their new Italian-American hybrid would take. The general consensus was that they should create a car that offered the best of both worlds – a Corvette with the distinction, performance and style of a Ferrari, but with the power and reliability of a Chevrolet. The aim was to create a genuine high-performance GT with enough leg and headroom to meet American expectations. Once this was decided, Coltrin put Laughlin in touch with Sergio Scaglietti.

With the help of Chevrolet General Manager Ed Cole, three 1959 Corvette chassis were discreetly acquired from the St. Louis Corvette plant before bodies could be fitted – one was specified with a “fuelie” and a four-speed, the others came with twin four barrels and automatics. During one of his frequent trips through Europe, Laughlin met with Sergio Scaglietti who agreed to produce a small run of bodies for the Corvette chassis. At the time, Scaglietti was busy turning out Ferrari’s Tour de France and purpose-built racing cars. The Scaglietti Corvette would follow the lines of the Tour de France, albeit lines adapted to fit the Corvette’s larger footprint. In an effort to impress, or perhaps, appease GM management, Laughlin specified a proper Corvette grille. The interior would be similarly hybridized with an intriguing combination of Americana – Stewart Warner gauges, T-handle parking brake, Corvette shift knob; and classic Italian GT – a purposeful crackle-finish dashboard, deeply bolstered leather seats and exquisite door hardware.

The completed car arrived in Texas in the fall of 1960, almost 18 months after the chassis had been obtained. It proved to be the only one of the three to be finished in Italy and shipped back to the United States as a complete car. When Laughlin received the car, the fit and finish were not quite what he was expecting, especially as the project had taken nearly three years from conception to completion. Enzo Ferrari would have been quite unhappy to hear that his exclusive coachbuilder was working on side projects for a group of Texans, so, to Scaglietti’s credit, the car was largely a prototype and the work was executed in a shroud of secrecy.

Towards the end of the project, Carroll Shelby, who by then was living in Italy, received a late-night phone call from Ed Cole. Cole had been chastised by GM management and was told to drop the project. It was poor timing. American car companies were under pressure to cut down on their high-performance and racing programs. They simply could not deal with the repercussions of a GM-backed Italianbodied Corvette. The remaining cars were shipped to Houston in a partially completed state. Jim Hall took delivery of one. Shelby, who had helped conceive the project, ended up declining the remaining car and it was promptly sold.

Jim Hall’s Chaparral race cars were among the most innovative designs of the 1960s, encompassing the use of lightweight composite materials; massive, downforce-generating rear wings; aluminum drivetrains; and even active aerodynamics. Chaparral cars haven’t been at the forefront of competition since Johnny Rutherford won the 1980 Indianapolis 500 driving a Chaparral 2K, which means their ingenuity is largely unknown to a new generation of race fans. Enter GM’s Advanced Design Studio, which has teamed with Jim Hall and game developer Polyphony Digital to introduce the Chevrolet Chaparral 2X VGT to the driving simulator game Gran Turismo 6, targeting today’s race fans along with tomorrow’s racers, designers and engineers.

The very first Chaparral race car wasn’t engineered or constructed by Hall, but instead by Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes with Hall’s input. Featuring a conventional front-engine, rear-drive design, the Chaparral 1 (essentially an evolution of the Troutman and Barnes-built Scarabs) was sold to a number of teams, including one fielded by Hall and Hap Sharp. A year later, in 1962, Hall and Sharp founded Chaparral Cars, Inc., and immediately set to work on designing the Chaparral 2.

Chaparral 2C.

The Chaparral 2 used a semi-monocoque fiberglass chassis which positioned the 327-cu.in. Chevrolet V-8 behind the driver, creating the very first sports racer to employ a mid-engine layout and monocoque construction. In the car’s first outing, at Riverside in 1963, Hall put the Chaparral 2 on the pole and established a new track record, but that proved to be the highlight of the season. As with any new race car, Hall spent much of the year debugging it, but also developed a partnership with General Motors that gave him access to the automaker’s aerodynamic research and engineers.

The Chaparral 2 helped Hall capture the United States Road Racing Championship in 1964, and in 1965 the team won the 12 Hours of Sebring. Development work on the Chaparral series was ongoing, and in conjunction with GM, Hall implemented such advancements as the data acquisition system, a torque converter transaxle, a racing-focused automatic transmission and increasingly sophisticated aerodynamics.

Chaparral 2E.

The Chaparral 2E Can-Am car debuted in 1966, and it carried a massive, driver-adjustable rear wing that transferred downforce not to the flexible bodywork, but rather to the rear wheel hubs themselves. Up front, the intakes didn’t flow air across radiators and oil coolers (which were mounted near the center of the car), but directed airflow to help reduce front end lift at high speeds. An evolution of the car, the Chaparral 2F, debuted in the World Championship endurance series in 1967, and set the fastest lap in five of the series eight races.

The best known Chapparal, however, was likely the 2J “Sucker Car,” which employed a snowmobile engine to power a pair of fans that vented air from beneath the chassis. By creating an area of low pressure beneath the car, the 2J was sucked down to the track without the use of a large, drag-inducing rear wing, improving performance in both corners and on straights.

With driver’s like Jackie Stewart and Vic Elford at the wheel, the 2J managed three pole positions in four races, but was plagued with reliability issues (many relating to the engine that powered the fans) that hampered the car’s potential. By the end of the season, the FIA applied its ban on “moveable aerodynamic devices” to the 2J, making it illegal for competition in the coming year.

Chaparral 2J, the infamous “sucker car.”

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Gran Turismo franchise for the Sony Playstation gaming console, the designer, Polyphony Digital, has invited automakers to create virtual cars that show the future of automotive design. Chevrolet’s entry will be the Chaparral 2X VGT, which GM’s vice president of global design, Ed Welburn, calls “…an example of what our designers are capable of when they are cut loose, no holds barred. A fantasy car in every sense of the word.”

Mark Reuss, GM’s executive vice president, global product development, purchasing and supply chain, gave another clue to the reason why that automaker chose to reimagine the Chapparal, saying, “Jim Hall and Chaparral blended the art of racing with science in an unprecedented way, changing the sport forever and inspiring a new generation to experiment with aerodynamics and unconventional materials. His race cars were four-wheeled physics projects that proved innovation—and a strong Chevy race engine—could drive you to the winner’s circle.”

Jim Hall (L) coaches John Surtees at Edmonton in 1969, as mechanic Franz Weis looks on. The car is a Chaparral 2H.

If a car in a video game fires up interest in the history of racing, or goes so far as to inspire the next generation of constructors or drivers, we’re all for it. Look for the Chaparral 2X VGT to appear in a future online update of Gran Turismo 6, and to see the real Chapparal 2, 2D, 2E, 2F 2H, 2J, and 2K, visit the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas.

UPDATE (19.November): Ahead of the car’s unveiling at this week’s Los Angeles Auto Show, Chevrolet has released the below image of the Chaparral 2X VGT.

Before Jim Hall designed and built innovative race cars with advanced features like adjustable aerodynamics, molded composite chassis and downforce-generating ducted fans, he was a race car driver. At the time, winning consistently in sports car racing generally required driving cars with European pedigrees, but Hall grew tired of buying last year’s models at next year’s prices from European vendors. When former Scarab constructors Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes approached Hall about building an all-new American sports racer in November of 1960, the cornerstone of Chaparral Cars was set, and the Chaparral 1 was born. Next January, one of two Jim Hall Chaparral 1 team cars will cross the block in Scottsdale, Arizona, available to the public for the first time since 2004.

Hall provided input into the design of the new car, which Troutman and Barnes had planned to name the Riverside Sports Racer until Hall’s $16,500 investment changed the name to Chaparral. Loosely based on the design of Lance Reventlow’s Scarab Mk. II sports racer, the Chaparral 1 used the same front engine, rear-drive layout as the Scarab Mk. II but tipped the scales at roughly 300 pounds less than its predecessor. The car’s suspension was upgraded as well, with the de Dion tube rear suspension used in the Scarab replaced by a fully independent rear suspension. Girling AR disc brakes were used in all four corners, and Halibrand supplied eight-inch-wide wheels for the rear and six-inch wheels for the front.

Power came from a 283-cu.in. Chevrolet V-8, stroked and bored by Traco Engineering to 318 cubic inches and initially fed by a trio of Stromberg carburetors. Hall soon realized that six carburetors would still produce good reliability while boosting output to a more reasonable 375 horsepower, sent through a Borg-Warner T-10 Corvette transmission. Unlike Hall’s later cars, there was little science behind the shape of the Chaparral 1′s bodywork; penned by Chuck Pelly (who had designed the Scarab’s bodywork), it was continually modified to allow for better air intake and cooling.

A total of five Chaparral 1s were built, including the prototype (which used an 88-inch wheelbase) and four production models (stretched to 90 inches to give the driver more legroom). Jim Hall took delivery of the prototype (officially, chassis 1-001) and the third car built, chassis 1-003, which will cross the stage in Scottsdale next January. On chassis 1-003′s first outing, at Sebring in March of 1962, drivers Hap Sharp, Jim Hall, Ronnie Hissom and Chuck Daigh brought the car home to a sixth place overall finish, but managed to take a class win. The car posted a victory at a Road America 500 mile event that same season, but only made one more appearance (at Sebring in 1963, where the car failed to finish) as a Jim Hall team car.

Hall’s initial plan for the Chaparral 1 was to build the car as a mid-engine design, but the lack of a transaxle robust enough to handle the power of the Chevrolet V-8 forced the change to a more conventional front engine, rear-drive layout. As the 1963 season unfolded, it became readily apparent to Hall that mid-engine cars were the wave of the future, and work was underway on a new Chaparral model, to be developed and built in-house. As the Chaparral 1 was no longer competitive, Hall sold both team cars and turned his attention to the development of the Chaparral 2A.

Chassis 1-003 was then purchased by Gary Wilson, who campaigned the car through the 1964 season. Its next owner was Joe Starkey, who used it to rack up a class win and an event win at SCCA outings in 1965. The car then passed through a series of owners who occasionally campaigned it in vintage events, and in 2001, chassis 1-003, which had undergone a 10-year restoration from 1987 to 1997, was purchased by Skip Barber. At Road America in 2002, Jim Hall was reunited with his former race car; when onlookers joked about the difficulty the six-foot, four-inch Hall was having in extricating himself from the car, he reportedly quipped, “I guess I was a lot more bendy 40 years ago.”

In August of 2004, RM Auctions offered chassis 1-003 for sale in Monterey, California, where it sold for a price of $1,111,000. Next January, RM Auctions expects the car to realize a selling price between $2,250,000 and $2,750,000 when it crosses the block in Scottsdale. For details on RM’s Scottdale sale, visit RMAuctions.com.

From the barren oil country of Texas, Jim Hall created racing cars, one after the other, that rocked and shocked the world of competition. The early Chaparrals with Chevrolet power and automatic transmissions. Their high-wing successors in the Can-Am. Closed coupes with high wings and big-blocks for Le Mans. The incredible, quickly banned “sucker” 2J. The first ground-effect car to win the Indianapolis 500.

We ought to mention that besides being an amazingly smart, Cal Tech-educated engineer, Hall was an exceptional race driver, having a career that dated back to 1954. The Road Racing Drivers Club is recognizing that by honoring the man from Midland at its annual West Coast banquet before the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. The date is Thursday, April 12, and the location is the Hilton on Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, California. We’re really curious about what kind of remarks will come from the famously taciturn Texan, a guy rivaled in that department only by Lloyd Ruby and Jim McElreath, a couple of other racers bred in the Texas countryside.

Recently, we wandered in a state of rapture into the Meadow Brook concours in Michigan, and found out that one of the feature categories encompassed motorcycles with sidecars. Good thing, because we’d have never been able to figure this thing out otherwise.

It’s called the Cat III, dates back to 1976, and lends real gravitas to the notion that while some of us are born with some loose screws, others deliberately get that way by racing sidehacks. In terms of pure technical innovation, the Cat III and its predecessors rank right up there with anything ever created by Jim Hall or Smokey Yunick. This is a moncocque-chassis racing sidecar motorcycle designed by the wildly creative Rudi Kurth, who could have given Henrik Ibsen some lessons in being a freethinker. The naked version shows its welded aluminum center spine, which also functioned as a fuel tank. The engine was a three-cylinder Crescent maritime unit. Its wheels were sized to use the mini-Goodyears originally molded to shoe the six-wheel Tyrrell P34 in Formula 1. Note that the whole rig, including the sidecar, is suspended by wishbones.

Absolutely nuts. The Cat III was hugely fast but fragile and very unpredictable. Kurth, who once designed a microbe-weight Formula Junior car with Alfa Romeo power, and a stainless-frame racing bike for Yamaha, crashed his way into retirement not very long after debuting the III. Kurth had experimented with monococque sidehacks as far back as 1967. He carried them to Europe’s road courses atop a series of Citroen wagons and Citroen-based haulers, from Clermont-Ferrand to the Isle of Man, with the comely Dane Rowe Kurth hanging onto the “monkey’s” platform. Don Ludewig presented this crazy, crafty creation at Meadow Brook.

What’s an employee of Boise, Idaho’s ICE WORLD to do? It’s getting to a point where you and your buddy can’t even make a midnight run to Burger King on the city’s Zambonis.

According to The Seattle Times, on November 10, two unnamed temporary groomers decided to take a break from the taxing world of driving slowly around in circles, and make the 1/2-mile trip to a local strip mall for some fast food. On their Zambonis.

According to the Times, an city tip line received an anonymous call from someone at a filling station who “saw the Zambonis roll through a Burger King drive-through, order food, and then return to the skating rink.”

The Boise Guardian reports that they were immediately fired, and the city is considering criminal prosecution. Jim Hall, director of the Parks Department, said it was, “One of the five stupidest things I have seen in 35 years of work in public parks,” suggesting he’s seen some mighty stupid things happen recently.

Corvette Thunder, 50 Years of Corvette Racing is the perfect gift for any Corvette racing enthusiast.

Why battle the crowds at the mall on Black Friday when you can purchase the perfect gift for any vintage Corvette racing buff right from the comfort of your computer?

Corvette Thunder, 50 Years of Corvette Racing by noted automotive historian Dave Friedman, covers the full panoply of Corvette successes and struggles on the racetrack.
As such, it tells a fascinating story, full of plot twists and midnight shenanigans, that feature some of the most famed characters to ever walk along the pit roads of the world’s most famed race circuits. Friedman’s other books include Daytona Cobra Coupes, Remembering the Shelby Years, plus histories of the Ford GT40 and the SCCA TransAm racing series.
“Racing made the Corvette into a world class sports car,” says Corvette Hall of Fame member Dick Guldstrand. “This book shows like no other how it happened, where it happened, and those people who made it happen.”
No other American car has as rich a heritage in motorsports as the Corvette. While the first 300 cars built in 1953, and even the 3,640 that followed in 1954, were not much of a
threat on the racetrack, within three years of its introduction the Corvette was setting speed records and winning races against the best the world could offer.

Friedman spent two years culling archives on three continents to find the 600-plus color and black-and-white photos contained in Corvette Thunder. “The book has scores of previously unpublished photos,” Friedman said. “Plus many unknown stories and even some historical surprises. Corvette Thunder, 50 Years of Corvette Racing is as complete and up-to-date as we could make it, covering everything from the early days of the famous Mexican Road Race up to and including the 2003 24 Hours of LeMans.”
Along with the treasure trove of photos are first-person recollections from many of the drivers who helped make the Corvette into a dominant force in racing. Men like Dr. Dick Thompson, John Fitch, Roger Penske, Jim Hall, Bob Bondurant, Dan Gurney, and Big Jim Jeffords, among others, lend their personal insights into how racing improved the Corvette, and how racing Corvettes affected their lives.
Published by Guldstrand Motor Productions, LLC, Corvette Thunder, 50 Years of Corvette Racing is hard-bound and beautifully reproduced on 400 pages of heavy gloss paper. Each book comes encased in its own protective slip case. The book is available now for $75 from book sellers dealing in automotive publications, or direct from the Guldstrand’s Web site, www.corvettethunder.com.
Books purchased through the Web site will be personally signed by both Dick Guldstrand and Dave Friedman.
For more information or to order books, contact Guldstrand Motor Productions, LLC, 818-840-6789.

(This post originally appeared in the November 24, 2005, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)